Chapter 555

Stark looked at Schiller with some surprise. He found that Schiller's expression was very serious, not joking. He also frowned and looked at Pym.

Pym was baffled by them. He scratched his head and said, "What's wrong with you two? What do you mean 'did I forget'? What did I forget?"

Seeing that Stark and Schiller were both staring at him, Pym explained, "Yes, I am researching artificial intelligence, but it's a different direction from what Howard was researching before..."

"I believe that human brain waves are very magical. If you want to endow intelligent life with a true soul, you can completely combine it with your own brain waves to create it. In this way, you can achieve..."

Schiller interrupted him and said, "I'm sorry, Dr. Pym. The most urgent thing right now is that I must confirm your mental state and see if you have been hypnotized."

The reason Schiller did this was that in the original comics, Ultron was not created by Stark and the Hulk, but by Dr. Pym, the Ant-Man.

The principle was about the same as what Pym said. Pym used his own brain waves to combine with an intelligent life, causing this artificial intelligence to develop true consciousness. This artificial intelligence was the later Ultron.

After Ultron was born with self-awareness, he began to hate his creator, so he attacked Dr. Pym and hypnotized him, making him completely forget that he had ever created Ultron.

Ultron's hypnosis was very successful, so he had enough time to evolve himself until he appeared and brought constant trouble to the Avengers.

Ultron possessed strong hypnotic abilities. In the comics, he even hypnotized Stark, making Stark build him a body—Ultron 9—and soaked this body in a solution, giving him an indestructible shell.

Schiller's attitude was very gentle, so Pym quickly calmed down. He frowned and asked, "You think my mental state has a problem. What kind of problem?"

"I suspect you may have been hypnotized." Schiller looked at Pym and said.

"But we just met. How did you judge that?" Pym questioned instinctively.

But at this moment, Stark had already guessed Schiller's intention. Artificial intelligence research, hypnosis, amnesia—connecting these keywords together, it wasn't hard to think of the plot of the Age of Ultron. As a master of artificial intelligence himself, Stark knew better than anyone how much harm an intelligent life that escaped the control of its creator would bring.

Schiller was a possessor of mind-reading. In aspects related to his profession, he wouldn't speak nonsense. It was very likely that Schiller saw some abnormal signs in Pym through mind-reading, which could explain why he felt Pym had a problem the moment he saw him.

Nick also advised, "Dr. Pym, I think I should have told you the purpose of coming here before. Before performing space operations, you must pass a test by a psychologist. You should know this, right?"

"I do know that. Could it be that this is the psychologist?" Just as Pym said this, he looked at Schiller's white lab coat, then at the medical record book in his hand, patted his head, and said, "Oh, alright, I'll change back to my original size first."

Pym pressed a button on his wrist, and with a "pop," a normal-sized Pym landed. He was also a clever person, so he guessed what Schiller was worried about. He asked, "You're worried that my research results hypnotized me?"

The two of them walked toward the laboratory bench in Stark's lab. As they walked, Pym said, "But I just started researching. The method I mentioned is still in the theoretical stage and hasn't been put into practice at all."

Schiller shook his head and said, "What if it was your research results that hypnotized you, making you believe all of this?"

Pym's expression suddenly changed somewhat. He stammered, "That shouldn't be... I never knew that artificial intelligence could hypnotize people. Even I can't..."

"Don't make me question your professional ability." Stark stood next to the chair, crossed his arms, and asked Pym, "What is the most powerful ability of artificial intelligence?"

"Learning." Pym answered immediately. He spread his hands and said, "But this is too absurd. Are you saying that I have already created a powerful artificial intelligence and then was hypnotized by him?"

Pym shook his head, obviously not believing this. Schiller patted the back of the chair and said, "Special circumstances. I won't ask you for a consultation fee. Sit here, and we'll conduct a test."

"Alright, what do I need to do?" Pym sat down.

He seemed very cooperative, so Schiller's attitude was also very good. Schiller moved a chair and sat opposite him, while Stark and Nick stood by, watching the conversation between the two.

Just then, Schiller took out a bottle of wine from somewhere. He gave Stark a wink, and Stark gave Jarvis a wink. Jarvis controlled a robot to bring over two wine glasses.

When the golden wine fell into the glass, tiny bubbles rose at the bottom, and a rich aroma of wine permeated the air. Stark, a drunkard, sniffed hard, seemingly intoxicated by this fragrance.

"Hey, where did you get such fragrant wine?" Stark sniffed and said somewhat dissatisfied, "You actually didn't share such a good thing?! Schiller, I really misjudged you. Give me a glass!"

Schiller didn't say anything, just handed the glass of wine in front of him to Stark. Stark picked it up and was about to drink, but the wine in the glass suddenly turned into blood with eyeballs soaking in it. Stark's hand shook, and he threw the glass out directly.

The wine glass drew a graceful arc in the air and shattered into several pieces upon landing. Accompanied by the crisp sound of shattering, the scene of Stark's laboratory shattered like glass.

Replacing it was a bedroom that looked simple and unadorned. After Pym reacted from his initial shock, he said, "What? Isn't this my bedroom? What's going on? What kind of trick did you play?!"

Schiller clapped his hands, attracting everyone's attention, and said, "Now, we are in Pym's dream. Here, we can also find evidence of him being hypnotized."

Stark raised an eyebrow and asked, "Is there a problem with that wine?"

Schiller explained, "Actually, going through the base of the Light Alliance is also fine, but it's a bit troublesome. Since the person is already here, it's better to enter the dream directly. It's faster this way."

As he spoke, Schiller waved his hand, and the scene of the bedroom shrank rapidly, turning into a small sphere floating in his hand. Immediately after, more spheres appeared. Pym discovered that inside them were one scene after another where he had lived: the apartment bedroom, the barn on the old farm, the laboratory on the West Coast...

Schiller arranged those light spheres into several rows, turning them into a wall. Before Pym could speak, Schiller said, "No, I have no interest in prying into other people's privacy. I'm just looking for what might have happened... Oh, here it is. See? This is the keyword: artificial intelligence."

loubiqu.

Schiller tapped on that light sphere, and the result wasn't a laboratory, but a field. Pym explained, "I first had the idea of researching artificial intelligence here, but that was a long time ago."

"Alright, for the sake of your privacy, can you tell me when was the last time you conducted such an experiment?"

"About half a year ago."

Schiller searched through that pile of light spheres again. Stark frowned and looked at him, saying, "You can actually do this kind of thing now? Searching through other people's memories at will and finding clues that might exist?"

"Actually, I've always been able to do it, or rather, many psychologists can do it. It's just that they use the kind of method you can understand, such as letting you lie on a chair, playing a piece of music, and guiding you to recall."

"And this kind of..." Schiller reached out, took a light sphere, and said, "It's just a more intuitive method, but the principle is the same."

"Many people don't care about their own memories. When they can't find something in their own memories, they think they've forgotten it. But in many cases, it's just because there isn't a suitable method and habit for organizing memories. Certain things are recorded in the brain, but they can't be found because of more redundant information."

"Memory has laws to follow. Therefore, a professionally trained psychologist can help you organize your memories. In the absence of true physiological diseases, this treatment helps you keep your brain clear and improve the efficiency of your thinking."

"Sounds like a scammer's statement." Stark summarized: "It's the kind of thing a drug pusher who claims to be able to improve human IQ and memory would say..."

"This can't improve IQ and memory." Schiller was still searching. While searching, he said, "I remember mentioning this issue in the September issue last year. I heard you've been very interested in psychology recently. Didn't you read it?"

"Uh..." Stark was choked, coughed twice with a guilty conscience, but Schiller didn't seem to be checking homework; he just said it casually. Soon, he got another light sphere and said, "Oh, here it is."

"See?" Schiller pointed to the light sphere and said, "It looks a bit dim, and the scene inside isn't very clear."

"What does this mean?" Pym walked up, crossed his arms, and stared at the light sphere. Schiller explained, "This means that your memory during this period is not stable enough and is very likely to have been interfered with by external forces."

Schiller crushed the light sphere, and several people appeared in the laboratory. Another Pym was operating in front of the computer. After a while, he suddenly stood up, and then sat down again. Stark walked up and asked Pym, who was standing on the side, "What are you doing?"

"I think the memory after he stood up should have been erased. The memory of sitting down and continuing to operate the computer was fabricated. Look, much of the information in the computer has become blurry; you can't tell what he was doing."

Pym frowned, seemingly trying hard to recall, but Schiller continued, "Everything we see here is what you remembered, Dr. Pym. I think, with your memory, you should be able to remember what you were doing on the computer at that time, even if it was some very complex programming, at least you should remember roughly."

"No, I can remember everything." Pym frowned and said, "Every line of code is stored in my brain."

"Then clearly, there is a problem. One second, you remember everything in the computer; the next second, the information in the computer becomes blurry. The only possibility is that someone modified your memory and implanted the memory that you have been working in front of the computer."

"But perhaps he wasn't skilled and didn't add any details, just added a summary like 'Dr. Pym has been working in front of the computer'."

"For ordinary people, this is enough. As long as you tell them during hypnosis 'you have been working during this time and haven't done anything else', they will believe it, because they wouldn't have remembered the specific details of working anyway."

"But for you, or clever people like Tony, if you check carefully, it's easy to find loopholes, because you remember all the details of your work. Your powerful memory makes memory replacement very difficult."

"Then can you hypnotize us?" Stark asked.

"A newly born artificial intelligent life can hypnotize Pym and make him unaware of it. Do you think I can hypnotize you?"

"But..." Schiller changed his tone and said, "Whether hypnosis can be successful and whether it can escape such a detailed inspection are two different things. There are many ways to make the human brain deceive itself, and many people won't check their memories for no reason. As long as they don't check, it's hard to discover."

Pym and Stark looked at each other. Schiller looked at them and said, "So, today's matter serves as a reminder to you. Check your recent memories regularly to see if there is anything abnormal. This can be a good way to prevent you from being hypnotized by all kinds of strange things."

"Next, let's return to reality and see if it was really your research results that hypnotized you."